Saturday, July 4, 2015

Three Santos Travelmasters in Oost-Anatolia

You may know that we travel on bikes
that were specially designed for travelling over the world. It's a
young Dutch brand, Santos, the type is Travelmaster (26 “ alu).
Equipped with Rohloff speedhub and belt drive, Magura rim brakes etc.
In the Netherlands it's one of the favourite brands among
bike-travellers. Until now we never saw a foreigner on a Santos bike.
Until now, because last week it happened. In the far east of
Anatolia, 50 k from the Georgian border in the far away mountain
village of Hanak there is one. This is the story: in Hanak there's
one of the few Warmshowers-hosts in this part of the world. We were
in touch with him; Cüneyd Isik, a young policeman. He could not host
us as he was having a nightshift. But to our surprise a cyclist came
riding up to us when we were approaching Hanak after 90 k and a
mountain pas of 2215 altitude.

It was Cüneyd on his bike and to our
big surprise he was riding on a shining Santos Travelmaster, exactly
like ours. Our mouths fell open, what is this? He appeared to be a
big fan of the brand and is one of the few Turkish Santos owners. It
caused a special bond between us. He accompanied us to the
ögretmenevi (teachers' house) where we would stay the night, we had
a nice chat, took a picture and off he went to do his duty.